A traditional technique for holding video conference is called multipoint control. A multipoint control unit (MCU) is a device that bridges and combines two (2) or more media streams, for example audio/video feeds, from a plurality of participants so that all participants can be provided with the same combined media stream. Multipoint control can be processor intensive and bandwidth intensive. Multipoint control requires decoding and re-encoding of the media streams, a process that adds latency and negatively impacts the user experience. These drawbacks of multipoint control may be significant, especially as the number of participants to the video conference grows. Selective forwarding is a more recent technology.
A selective forwarding unit (SFU) receives media streams from two (2) or more participants and determines which of these media streams should be forwarded to which participants. Selective forwarding is less processor intensive than multipoint control. However, terminals used by participants to a conference communication may not all be capable of supporting selective forwarding.
A so-called “network cloud” may provide a large amount of resources sufficient to accommodate high-bandwidth, high-processing communications such as a video conference between an important number of participants. However, for many organizations, the cost of holding a video conference on the network cloud may be prohibitive.
Accordingly, improvements aiming at optimizing set-up and control of conference communications may be desirable.